


When Everything's Made to Be Broken

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Secret Identity, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-30 08:47:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Batman wakes up in an abandoned farmhouse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Everything's Made to Be Broken

_And I don't want the world to see me,  
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand.  
When everything's made to be broken,  
I just want you to know who I am.  
\--The Goo Goo Dolls, "Iris"  
_

He woke up to silence.

Batman opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling--white plaster, with a crack running along one side and a coffee-colored water stain in one corner. The bed he was on was a bare mattress, he discovered as he sat up, a double bed with a simple wooden headboard. It was the only piece of furniture in the room, although there were four cardboard boxes stacked in a corner. The closet was open, and a few wire hangers hung listlessly inside. A light bulb without a fixture hung from the ceiling, shedding hardly more light than the dim flat sunlight from outside.

How had he gotten here? Batman sat on the side of the bed and gathered his thoughts. The League had been in battle with Dr. Destiny--there had been a flash of light and pain--and did he remember Superman's voice crying out?

"Batman to League," he said. No reply, only the strange ring one's voice had from bare walls in silence. He opened a channel to Gotham. "Robin. Report." Nothing.

Outside the curtainless window he could see a gray sky and a leafless tree, its branches stark against the clouds. There were fields of shattered corn stalks in the distance. His breath steamed in front of him and he realized it was bitterly cold, but there was no snow on the ground to soften the bleak landscape.

Batman went to the door and into the hall outside. He could make out flocked wallpaper on the walls, the pattern old-fashioned and faded. There was a bathroom--the sink bare, the bathtub stripped of its shower curtain--and two small rooms devoid of boxes.

At the far end of the hall was a closed door. Batman tested the old-fashioned metal doorknob: locked. He made a note of it and turned around to find the stairs to the first floor.

The creaking stairs led down into the main floor of what was clearly some kind of large old farmhouse. The furniture was covered with plastic, and the rooms were mostly bare, though there were boxes stacked neatly in the corners here and there. The cold in the house was absolute; usually a house held heat for some time, but the air here was devoid of any warmth. Batman touched the banister and examined the dust on his gloves: the house had been standing empty for at least three to five years, he would estimate.

The silence was unnerving: empty of birdsong or distant traffic, it seemed to press in on him. The front door swung open soundlessly to reveal a brown lawn and a red barn standing in front of another field of corn. There was a "For Sale" sign on the lawn, looking raw and mournful, and a rusty pickup truck, its door ajar and the bed stacked with boxes. The license plates were blank, featureless rectangles.

"Is anyone here?" Batman called back into the house.

"Here...here..." answered echoes of his own voice, but nothing else. The hairs on the back of his neck were prickling, though, with the instinctive feeling he was being watched. Yet there was no sound, no motion. Nothing stirred in the curtainless windows.

Shrugging slightly, he walked down the front stairs and started down the driveway. He could follow the road to a town and--

With no real sense of surprise, he reached the road to find that it stopped a few meters from the end of the driveway. "Stopped" as in "stopped existing," falling into an utterly featureless void that wasn't even black, it was _nothing_. Batman turned away from it, feeling slightly existentially ill. All right then. This was a dream of some sort. They'd been fighting Dr. Destiny, he specialized in trapping people in dreams.

The question was--whose dream?

The name on the mailbox at the end of the driveway had been erased: it looked like it had been a short name, but beyond that, Batman couldn't be sure. He walked back up the driveway, grateful for the cowl that still hid his face from the persistent sense of being watched. Whose mind was he trapped in? This was nowhere he had ever been, so it was safe to say it was not his own. And yet it didn't feel like Dr. Destiny's mind, either. It was ridiculous and unscientific, but there was no sense of cruelty in this desolate landscape, no lurking malice. Just...loneliness.

He did a mental inventory of who had been nearby when the League was fighting Dr. Destiny. He'd done the requisite background work into Jordan and Allen shortly after learning their real identities, and this place didn't look like something from their lives. It certainly wasn't in Atlantis, or Paradise Island, or at the North Pole. He didn't know much about Element Woman, but this place seemed too quiet to be part of her mind.

Perhaps one of the bystanders? They'd been fighting Dr. Destiny in New York City; it was possible the League had been thrown into the minds of the civilians nearby.

He looked around at the barn, the empty farmhouse, the fields. The architecture was American, the surroundings rural. Possibly somewhere in the Midwest, but it could be East Coast as well.

Batman walked around the house, examining the architecture, and as he did he noticed them, tucked under a tree on the back of the property: two small, plain gravestones.

He walked over to them, but there were no names on the simple marble curves, just the words "Ma" and "Pa." More evidence for a Midwestern setting, thought Batman--but his deductions faltered before the stark sorrow of the two gray stones. He bowed his head for a moment, then turned away, feeling he had intruded on a private grief.

The feeling of intrusion continued as Batman went back to the farmhouse, and the sense of solitude in the air was almost palpable as he stepped over the threshold. This time he looked more carefully. The furnishings under the slipcovers in the living room were old-fashioned but also well-worn, so this wasn't a place set far in the past. He opened the refrigerator: empty. On the walls photo frames hung askew, empty frames with no photos in them. He started to open one of the boxes on the counter, then paused. "I'm sorry," he said to the pained silence, "But I need to figure out where I am and how to get out. I'm a detective," he murmured as if asking for absolution. "I promise I won't use anything I learn against you."

The box was filled with china, slightly chipped but obviously well-tended. There was a collection of ceramic thimbles from places around the country, and some carnival glass vases and bowls, their iridescent sheen muted in the dim light. A thrifty family that cherished its heirlooms.

In the living room, there was a box of old magazines: _Life_ and _National Geographic_ , with some _Scientific American_ and _Astronomy_ mixed in, dated in the 1970s and 80s. Another box yielded a stack of old homework and drawings by someone named "Clark": spelling tests, a limerick that scanned badly, math homework, a story about a man who traveled to the moon and found a treasure there, scrawled in a childish hand. No last names. Another story with more mature handwriting, yet still not adult: "Gray Ghost and the Perilous Power." Apparently the Gray Ghost had picked up a teenaged sidekick codenamed Ghost Boy who was "brave and true." Batman nearly smiled as he put away the folders and Trapper-Keepers with the planets on the covers.

Upstairs yielded nothing much more useful. There were knick-knacks and carefully folded clothes in the main bedroom: well-used overalls and aprons, a cashmere sweater carefully mended to make it last longer. The guest rooms were empty.

Batman stopped outside the locked door. There was a desolate sound at the edge of his hearing, and he realized that the wind outside had picked up and was keening around the corners of the house. Frowning, he pulled out his lockpicks, but although the lock on the door was extremely simple, it didn't budge. He considered trying to break it down, but he suspected that there was no way into the room. Except maybe one.

Resting one hand flat on the door, Batman said, "You're in there, aren't you? The person whose memories these are. Are you the child who did that homework I found downstairs? Are you Clark?" The wind's monotonous, mournful sound was his only answer. "I suppose you're not a child anymore, based on the dates on the magazines. You're probably close to my age." He leaned closer to the door, almost resting his forehead on it. "Clark. I need you to open the door and let me in. I know it's hard. Your parents are gone and you feel like you're alone in the world, like no one has ever felt the way you do. But..." He bit his lip for an instant. "I do. I lost my parents when I was very young. And for a long time, I thought I had to shut everyone out of my life and make my heart a locked room, not let anyone in. But trust me, that doesn't work. You're a smart person. I saw your grades, I saw the stories you wrote as a kid. And I've seen a little of what your parents were like. I don't think you want to be alone. I think you want to let me in."

He rested his hand lightly on the lock, and the house shuddered as a burst of wind slammed against it. "You want to let me in, want me to see you. Otherwise this door wouldn't even be here. It would just be a blank wall. I'm Batman," he said gently, "And everyone knows I never give up, and I can get through any lock. You wouldn't have left me a lock if you didn't want me to come in. Clark," he murmured, feeling the house listening all around him, "Let me in. Please."

At the last word, there was a soft _click_ and the door swung open at the touch of his hand.

The room on the other side was decidedly mundane: the items inside were only half-packed up, open boxes strewn desultorily around the room, the desk still cluttered.

On the bed sat a man in glasses, wearing a flannel shirt. He looked warily at Batman, and even though Batman had never seen him before in his life, he know, with the certain logic of dreams, who he was looking at.

"Kal?"

The man sitting on the bed almost smiled, raised a hand in a tentative wave, let it fall again. "Hello," he said.

Batman frowned. "Why is the center of your mind represented by a farmhouse in Iowa?"

"Kansas, actually," said Superman-in-a-flannel-shirt, and even his voice sounded different: softer, more thoughtful. Yet it was Superman, Batman _knew_ that. "This is...where I grew up."

"I thought you lived at the North Pole," said Batman.

"It's a long story," said Superman.

"Well, we might have a lot of time for you to tell me about it, if we're trapped here."

"Oh, we're not trapped here," said Kal quickly. "It's...during the fight with Dr. Destiny, you were...badly hurt. Your brain was damaged. I flew you back to my Fortress." There were lines of strain around his mouth and eyes, and Batman wondered just how badly he'd been hurt. "It said it could heal your brain, but your consciousness had to be...stored somewhere safe during the process."

"Your own mind."

Kal nodded. "I'm meditating right now and...holding your psyche."

"You knew I'd see this." Batman's gesture took in the farmhouse, the barren landscape outside the windows. "That I'd see your secrets. You must have known I wouldn't have been able to resist a mystery. You could have just let me die," he said.

 _"What?_ " Superman looked appalled. "I wouldn't let anyone die to protect my secrets, especially not--" He broke off, and Batman was startled to see him look flustered.

"I never knew...that you had another identity beyond Kal," he said quickly.

"No one does." Superman looked down. "The only people who ever knew are...dead. Six years ago."

" _No one_ knows?"

Superman looked at him. He shook his head.

"Well, no wonder this is the center of your mind," said Batman, torn suddenly between pity and anger. "You left so much of yourself here when your parents died, and you've locked it up and don't let anyone in. So this place is frozen in your mind as it was when you last saw it: forever abandoned and alone. That's not living, Kal. You have to let people in. Believe me, I know." Kal's eyes widened as he reached up and pulled off the cowl, running a hand through his hair. It was less frigid in the house, he realized suddenly. Almost comfortable. "Nice to meet you," Bruce said, putting out his hand. "I'm Bruce Wayne."

Superman took his hand. "Clark," he said, very quietly, then cleared his throat and said more loudly, "Clark Kent." He smiled suddenly at Bruce, a very different smile from Superman's confident grin, and Bruce found himself smiling back.

There was a distant chime, and a soft voice said something in a sibilant tongue. Clark nodded and replied in the same language. "The Fortress says you have two hours until full recovery," he said to Bruce.

"Well," said Bruce, "If I'm going to be a guest in your soul for a while longer, could you at least offer me breakfast?" He gestured toward the door and the stairs, where the smell of fresh-brewed coffee was wafting up from the first floor.

Clark looked surprised. "I...guess maybe I could put something together," he said.

Together they walked down the stairs to the kitchen. Clark opened the refrigerator and found it full of food. "Oh," he said softly, pleased. "I'll make you my Ma's famous omelets." He gestured toward one of the boxes. "Pull out some of the china."

As Bruce set the table, he realized the frames on the walls had pictures in them now: a smiling, gray-haired woman and man, with a little boy in front of them. "These are your parents?"

Clark looked over from the cutting board and smiled. "Yes. Jonathan and Martha Kent. And yours truly." A quick blur of motion, a deft flourish, and the scent of sauteed garlic and onions filled the kitchen. He broke some eggs into the skillet and stirred, humming under his breath. "Help yourself to coffee," he said.

"Don't mind if I do." Bruce found two mugs and poured coffee from the coffee maker into them. "So, I thought you were an alien. But your parents--"

"--They're not my birth parents. They found me," Clark said as he slid a fluffy omelet onto a plate in front of Bruce. "Do you...want the whole story?"

"You said we've got a couple of hours," Bruce said. "Tell me."

So they ate together and drank good, strong coffee, and Clark told him the story of a doomed planet, its desperate scientists, their last hope. Partway through his story, Bruce noticed that one of the branches outside the kitchen window had broken into flower, pale apple blossoms catching the sunlight. He took a sip of coffee and watched Clark Kent's face.

Somewhere among the apple blossoms, a single bird burst into song as if spring were coming at last.


End file.
